PSYCHOTHERAPY GUILD FETES ‘FLY,’ 6 OTHER FILMS

The Psychotherapy Screening Guild, a group of mental-health professionals, has honored seven films that “explore the human condition with sensitivity.”

“Children of a Lesser God,” “Blue Velvet,” “Mona Lisa,” “The Fly,” “Stand By Me,” “Platoon” and “The Decline of the American Empire” were recipients of the Helos Awards presented by the guild Saturday.

Stuart Fischoff, head of the Screening Guild--which claims 250 mental-health professionals--said he decided to organize the group three years ago in response to his growing concern about film content.

The result is a group that conducts seminars on the psychological impact of films and advises studios about the psychological content of films. It rewards films that meet “standards of psychological reality” with a Helos Award.

“We turn down a lot of exploitation films (because) whatever the negative aspects of a film . . . (they) must be outweighed by the positive,” he said.

“We’re not going to take a ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’ ”

They did take “The Fly,” though, and it beat out “Short Circuit” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” in the Realm of the Imagination category. “It had heart,” Fischoff said.

Fischoff, 46, a professor at California State University, Los Angeles and an occasional screenwriter, said he doesn’t see any contradiction in a group of mental-health professionals honoring films like “The Fly”:

“This film might be upsetting to squeamish people, but we feel on balance that we’ve honored a worthwhile film with something psychologically realistic to say.”

When the group comes “to conclusions about the merit of films, we want to communicate them in hopes of rewarding courage in film making, and the writers.”

The hope is that the award will “elevate the quality and the social responsibility of films,” he said. “It (the goal) might be unrealistic but it’s worthy of pursuit.”